With Isro’s most powerful rocket LVM-3 carrying the Chandrayaan-3 module on its tip standing tall on the launchpad inSriharikotaand the lunarcraft raring to begin itsMoonjourney next Friday, India is on the cusp of “becoming the fourth country after the US,Russiaand China to land on the Moon”, space ministerJitendra Singhsaid.
“After a quantum rise in our space expertise, India can no longer wait to be left behind in its march to the Moon,” he said.
After landing on Moon, the space minister said, the Chandrayaan-3 rover with six wheels will come out of the lander and is expected to work for 14 days on the lunar surface. “With the support of multiple cameras on the rover, we will be able to receive images,” Singh said.
The space minister said the primary objectives of the Chandrayaan-3 mission are threefold: to demonstrate safe and soft-landing on the lunar surface; to demonstrate rover roving on the Moon; and to conduct in-situ scientific experiments.
Singh said based on the current trajectory of Growth, India’s space sector could be a $1 trillion economy in the coming years. Currently, the space economy in India is very small accounting for about 2.1% of the global space economy in 2020 amounting to $9.6 billion, which is 0.4$ of the GDP of the country.